Midpoint Evaluation

At this point, I am about halfway though my project, and while it isn’t exactly halfway through our allocated weeks, it is halfway through drafting and reaching the final stages. At this point I have finished all my first drafts and from here I need to make decisions about technical changes and what I can do to maximise my works connection to my target audience. To start off with, 3 of my drafts for my boards have been completed, with the Chinese board still to be created. The reason for this is because of the simplistic design of the Chinese characters, it should be the easiest one to do and therefor is being left till last to make time for the more complicated and time consuming designs. The first thing of note is that the Japanese board has been updated so the translation is correct and the lines are thicker to fill up more of the empty space. The next step in this draft however is to include the Japanese flag to the background, hopefully this will be a step in the right direction but even if it isn’t, it will still be interesting to see as an experiment. The shapes were all made with the shape tool in photoshop, and I used the warp function to curve them and to angle them in certain ways. For some, I used the circle as warping a straight line in that way would take too much time and wouldn’t look nearly as good.

The Nepalese board turned out to be a lot more challenging than any of the other, this is because of the numerous curves and tiny details in the characters which made it a lot harder than previously thought. I’m sure about some of the curves however, I may reconsider the designs in order to make them smoother and less thick in the middle. All of the boards as well need a background and so that’s the next step for all of them.

The Korean board was pretty much taken straight from my initial draft and hasn’t been worked on yet. Following suit, the boards background will soon include the flag which will hopefully bring some colour to the board and fill up that negative space.

I started my other shirt designs at this point because I had been spending my time working on this hat. This was easily the hardest and most time consuming design out of everything I’ve done so far. The part that took so long was the part on the cap where it angles in a different direction. This wasn’t that easy as I had to separate the line, angle it, and then fill in the empty space that was left behind. There is still work to do on it, however I am pretty happy with what I have made so far. I also think what I have so far links greatly to my target audience and it also brings my clothes and my boards together. The reason I think it works with my audience is because of the simplistic design, the bold vivid colours and the sleek style. All of these things are associated with Indie designs.

I have already talked about this shirt design however what I haven’t mentioned is how I have decided to have all four of my shirts to match this similar design, using shattered and destroyed card suits. However I haven’t started work on them yet but they will be made and posted later in future drafting and evaluations. The way I created these designs was simple, I used photoshop and I only had to use one tool, the polygonal lasso to cut out the shapes, select the cut portions and manipulate them to move them around the design to create this shattered effect. The cracks were done the same way but were instead deleted. All of the cracks are random as it is too much to plan every single crack and movement.

For the wheels, I had started on them first for all the matching boards and got them finished before anything else. This was because they were relatively simple to complete and quick to do. The most time consuming wheel to do was the Nepali one as the shapes were again, confusing and hard to piece together due to their size. After looking at these designs and how the maps play into the background, this really boosted my confidence in my idea of adding the flag to the board. I think that this is the step that I need to take in order to create the most optimal design.

These are the translations that will also be included in the final pieces, this is to help show what the boards and wheels say and prove that the translations are correct. The reason I chose these words is because I wanted to use Harmony on the wheel as wheels are synonymous with harmony and balance as found in Buddhism, which is also one of the most popular Asian religions. I used Freedom for the board as skating is often associated with freedom as it it is liberating and also rebellious.

One consideration I did have however was Thai, however I dropped that idea quickly as the language is far too confusing and long. It wouldn’t fit onto a board a wheel effectively without being too small so I had to abandon that idea and move onto a different language. That is how I came across Nepalese as I wanted something short, Asian and easy to recreate.

Looking briefly at my book work at this stage. I started to theorise what my board would look like a flag based background and the board and I also briefly talked about my reasoning for using Freedom and Harmony and where I wanted them.